Thread by @jeffjarvis

Facebook head of policy & PR @nick_clegg responds to moral panic about the net, saying we do have agency. I agree.
But I hate this sentence: "Should governments set out what kinds of conversation citizens are allowed to participate in?" Don't even ask.

nickclegg.medium.com/you-and-the-al…

He also says: "The internet needs new rules — designed and agreed by democratically elected institutions..." This is FB's stand lately: Please regulate us. I worry about that regulatory capture & how it will impact new & small competitors. I worry about over-regulation.

But I do agree with @nick_clegg that we do have agency on the net, that personalization has benefits over mass media, and especially that media have responsibility for polarization and disinformation (which media, of course, ignore in their moral panic against the net).

Clegg says Facebook is adding tools to provide more power over the algorithm. I haven't tried them yet, but good. I also always wish that FB would formulate a north star, a raison d'etre to which we could hold it to account. Maybe next.

I especially agree with @nick_clegg in his conclusion: "We need to look at ourselves in the mirror, and not wrap ourselves in the false comfort that we have simply been manipulated by machines all along." Blaming machines for society's ills prevents us from examining those ills.